Shinichi Takeuchi: Facing the "Case Method"

I wonder if my fellow Keio University alumni have ever heard the term "Case Method" somewhere before. Probably fewer than 10% of Japanese adults would answer "yes" to this question, and even for readers of Mita-hyoron (official monthly journal published by Keio University Press), it may be an unfamiliar term.

The Case Method is an educational term that describes a certain teaching method (plainly put, a "way of making people learn"). In today's turbulent society, education is becoming increasingly important. In response, teaching methods are diversifying, but many seem short-lived, gaining attention only to be forgotten. In such an environment, the Case Method can be called a long-lived teaching method that continues to receive strong support from society, despite repeatedly being both praised and questioned.

I have been facing this Case Method for over 15 years, and now I am renewing my stance toward it once again. In this article, I will speak about the full extent of my feelings toward the Case Method.

If I were to try to answer this sub-heading in detail within the limited space, this article would turn into an "Introduction to the Case Method," so I will refrain. Nevertheless, what I want to note is that many learners look back and say, "The memories of learning through the Case Method are so vivid that they are still deeply etched in my heart." Many of these people now hold important positions in society. As a trend in their educational backgrounds, it is not uncommon for them to have a history of learning through the Case Method.

To add a little more explanation, in the Case Method teaching style, teachers refrain from explicit teaching. Learners take in the problematic situations described in booklets called "cases" and engage in thorough discussions with peers on how to overcome them. The teacher asks further questions to support, encourage, and deepen that discussion. The classroom scene of a Case Method lesson is just like Socrates' maieutics (midwifery).

It goes without saying that while this teaching method is quite tough for students, the burden on the faculty side is even greater. Even though the teacher clearly knows what they "want to teach," they do not teach it directly, but rather let the students discuss and realize it for themselves. Perhaps due to this "roundaboutness," the method may appear to researchers at the forefront of their fields as one that does not offer many attractive aspects.

This teaching method was born in legal education in the 1870s in the United States, the homeland of Case Method education, and developed in management education from the 1920s onward. Later, as an indispensable teaching method for management education, it crossed the ocean in the 1950s and spread to Eastern Europe, South America, Asia, and the Middle East. At that time, Keio University received this teaching method from HBS (Harvard Business School) as a representative of Japan, and the Keio Business School (KBS), the predecessor of the current Graduate School of Business Administration, became a pioneering practitioner of Case Method education in Japan. I would like Keio University alumni to know this part of Case Method history.

Frankly speaking, it cannot be said that Case Method education has become widely popular in Japan. However, regarding the practice at KBS, we can take pride before the world in our journey of pursuing high-level education purely and without compromise at a school-wide level. While there were many higher education institutions that formally imitated Case Method education during this time, it seems that no institution appeared that deepened it as much as KBS until very recently.

After working for an automobile manufacturer for 14 years, I enrolled in KBS as a working student with the goal of advancing my career as an automotive industry professional. Being showered with Case Method education at KBS became a turning point in my life.

In my eyes, having been engaged in human resource development at a company, the Case Method appeared as an "extraordinary teaching method," and I intuitively felt it was a "gold mine" for practical adult education. It was also significant that I met Professor Haruo Takagi (now Professor Emeritus and professor at Nagoya University of Commerce & Business Graduate School), a leading practitioner of Case Method education at KBS, and received direct guidance in his master's seminar.

In this way, I easily threw away my career as an automotive professional, and before I knew it, I found myself starting on the path of a Case Method education researcher. The accumulation of experience from being allowed to serve as a specially appointed faculty member at KBS for 10 years was a major factor in my reaching my current position.

I feel that the Case Method is a teaching method that essentially possesses a great deal of "Keio University-ness." This is because the principles and philosophy of Case Method education seem to overlap directly with the endeavor to blossom the fragrant scholarship that Keio University's founding spirit, academic style, and successive generations of faculty, staff, graduate students, undergraduate students, and Keio University alumni have carefully woven.

I first felt this when I encountered a passage in the "Prospectus for the Establishment of the Graduate School of Business Administration" submitted to the Ministry of Education in 1978. It stated the following:

"Among the principles and rules established by the science of management, it cannot be said that there are none effective for making the judgments to be taken as a manager rational and for enhancing their insight. However, an educational method that imparts these as they are causes the student's thinking to become fixed upon them, leading to a loss of flexibility in thought. Alternatively, it results in a dependence on 'authoritative' literature or the words of the teacher for problem-solving, avoiding the effort of thinking for oneself, and consequently hindering the development of the spirit of independence and self-respect."

(Omitted) ...The essential abilities for a manager can only be fostered through training that does not shy away from repetition. Therefore, this Business School has decided to rely on the Case Method for the majority of its curriculum."

I later learned that this text largely reflects what the five young faculty members who worked hard to open KBS learned at HBS and brought back with them. Even so, throughout the text, one can feel an intellectual freshness, the bittersweetness of scholarship, and even a sense of awe, showing the bold yet well-considered footprints of Keio University as it stepped into the new field of management education. I felt that beyond management education, there was a passionate logic aimed at uncompromising character building.

After teaching the "Case Method Teaching Method" to graduate students at KBS for 10 years, I moved to the Nagoya University of Commerce & Business Graduate School (NUCB BS) this April via Tokushima Bunri University. Having likely passed the midpoint of my life in terms of age, I intend to dedicate my remaining time to the Case Method at NUCB BS.

NUCB BS, which is also a pioneering accredited school for international business school certifications such as AACSB (The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) and AMBA (Association of MBAs), completed a tower campus (14 floors above ground and 1 basement level) dedicated to the business school three years ago in the center of Nagoya. It is fully equipped with a Case Method educational environment just like HBS or IMD (International Institute for Management Development). The NUCB headquarters visited top schools in Europe and the US with a major construction firm and faithfully reproduced even the atmosphere of a business school that teaches via the Case Method, while keeping an eye on both tradition and innovation.

Some might mock this as "starting with the form," but I can state with certainty that a teacher standing at the podium of a tiered classroom built this way can never feel like simply lecturing on their own theories, and students will never feel like just listening to the teacher's words and waiting for the bell to ring while taking notes.

Organization-wide engagement with a teaching method manifests in this way at a private university. One of the major reasons I left my previous post in Tokushima and moved to Nagoya, despite being discourteous to those involved, was the existence of university management leaders who are strongly committed to Case Method education. Professor Haruo Takagi, who began teaching at NUCB BS a step ahead of me, likely felt the same way.

Thus, at NUCB, where Professor Takagi and I have moved, a "Case Method Research Center" was newly established as an internal academic research organization this April, and I was appointed as the first Director. Here, instead of appointing faculty in charge of FD (Faculty Development) as research staff, only those of dean-level were installed. Viewing "teaching methods as a matter for the dean" is very typical of NUCB.

My future work at this university will be two-pronged: "expanding the base of practice" and "increasing the degree of authenticity of practices that can be called 'the real thing'" for the Case Method education practiced in various ways by various educational entities in Japan. Personally, I would like to emphasize the latter, but social needs concentrate on the former. I intend to find the key to where the interaction between the former and the latter occurs.

In recent years, teaching methods have tended toward techniques rather than philosophy, and their educational effects need to be evaluated more objectively than before. This wave is also reaching the education provided by leading groups in higher education. Short-term results are expected, and while standardization of education is welcomed, the remaining of individual dependency is disliked. It is truly an era of "headwinds" for Case Method education, but "living in difficult times" will surely become a good page in the evolutionary theory of teaching methods.

The Case Method Research Center at NUCB BS intends to provide consultation for Case Method education throughout Japan, and will be able to provide information and technical support. Furthermore, using these activities as a driving force, we can look forward to fostering doctoral degree holders who take Case Method education as their research subject in the not-too-distant future. While not many experts who can pass Case Method education to the next generation may appear, as long as it is "people" who connect history, we cannot see the developmental practice of the next generation without lodging it in people.

Professor David A. Garvin of HBS, from whom I received valuable research suggestions and with whom I had discussions, passed away suddenly last year. In a small-scale world of practice with few key persons like the "Case Method education world," the early death of even one such person easily changes the history of the teaching method. My final words are cliché, but time is limited for us as well.